NEW YORK, July 3 -- He won the rights to "Y.M.C.A." in court, and the song still got away from him. Victor Willis, the Village People frontman who co-wrote the most recognizable sequence of letters in the history of pop music, died Tuesday following what his wife described as "a short but aggressive illness." He was 74.

Karen Huff Willis announced his death on Willis's Facebook page Wednesday morning. The family requested privacy. No additional details about the nature of his illness were disclosed by his wife or by the band.

Willis spent his last years watching "Y.M.C.A." become a staple of Donald Trump's political rallies - its horn intro the call-and-response of MAGA crowds, the four-letter spelling bee that became Trump's own onstag...